A Golden Easter Morning
by OneMagician
Summary: One shot AU dabble, set in Avonlea 2014, no curse. Belle and Robert Gold have three children and manage to oversleep on Easter Sunday - the Easter Bunny wasn't quick enough to hide the eggs for the girls' Easter Egg Hunt in their garden. What now?


Sunlight flooded their bedroom. It was a bright and sunny Easter Sunday morning, and it was already past eight, as Belle discovered, when she sleepily checked her smart-phone.

_Past eight! Why was it already past eight? Crap!_

She made a soft shrieking noise, realizing that they'd overslept, and abruptly rose, giving herself a jolt of dizziness in doing so. "Get up," she demanded of her husband exasperatedly, pulling his covers off and dumping them down her side of the bed where he couldn't reach them. "Robert, up! Get up! _The children!_"

Robert groaned, burying his face in the pillow and groping for the covers.

She hurriedly rounded the bed and raised the blinds on his side of the room, picking up some stray pieces of clothing from the floor along the way.

"Robert Gold! Get up _right now!_" she repeated more sharply, thumping his leg with the palm of her hand underneath the comforter that he'd managed to get a hold of from the foot of the bed. "The kids are going to be up any minute!"

He yawned and turned on his back, stretching tautly, before deliberately shifting to the edge of the bed and catching her around the waist in one fluid motion as he sat up. He drew her back onto his lap with some amount of effort, and nuzzled the side of her neck, tracing sweet kisses up towards her ear and enveloping her in his arms.

"Stop it," she insisted, pushing herself off of him with difficulty; he wasn't about to make this easy on her. He never made anything easy on her… "The kids!" she told him, a hint of regret in her voice, leaning in to steal just one more quick snog on the lips.

The kids had been up half the night, because they'd all been to the late Easter Night Mass in the old historical town core of Avonlea. The medieval church was a beautiful building that had miraculously remained unscathed by several wars and time itself all the years of its very long existence; even some of the original tall gothic stained glass windows were still in place. Marble pillars supported the high vaulted ceilings that were lined by intricately painted stuccos, and the heavy, dark double winged entrance doors were fortified with cast iron plates depicting raging battles between Good and Evil and the monarchs that had ruled this realm in times long gone by.

"The kids are still fast asleep," he replied reassuringly, thinking of how he'd carried their youngest daughter, Subaia, all the way from the backseat of the car up to her room just before midnight. The five-year-old had curled up and gone to sleep the minute he'd put her down, and he hadn't undressed her fully for fear of disturbing the chubby little girl. He'd merely taken her shoes and pulled the yellow Sunday dress gently up over her head before covering her with her favorite blanky, because she was lying on the comforter.

Elias, their oldest, had been hungry, as he always seemed to be nowadays, and he'd eaten a sandwich in the kitchen before going to his room. The boy on the edge of pubescence had taken himself to bed without anyone having to check on him, much unlike their middle daughter, Annie. Belle had been arguing with the headstrong child a while into the night; his little witch been convinced this was still a good time for her to play a CD at full blast. She'd been upset at having lost the Easter candle she'd been given at church and just wouldn't go to sleep. Belle had finally taken the stereo player from her room and deposited it on the floor beside his nightstand, where it still sat.

They'd all be another hour _at least_, he thought, while his wife was already padding down the stairs on her bare feet after having hastily pulled on some blue sweatpants and a dark hoody that he'd bought for himself only to find that they were too small for him.

He sighed and lounged back on the mattress for a moment, brushing a hand across his face and trying to decide whether or not to risk a quick shower before following her.

Elias was already sitting at the kitchen table when Belle bustled in, tugging on her sneakers. Her hair was an unruly nightmare of curls, and the boy was obviously quite well amused by her general appearance, as he slowly sipped a glass of juice, watching her flip the switch on the coffee machine and open the dishwasher she'd forgotten to clear out the previous evening.

"About time, dearie," he smirked, copying the tone and the look his father sometimes gave her when she was running late in the mornings.

She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow at him. Then, to her horror, she noted that the cartons of colored eggs she had yet to hide in the yard were gone. "No!" she exclaimed, doubting her sanity, as she so often did when things went missing around the house. "Elias, have you seen the eggs? I put them right here on the table last night…!"

"Rrrreally, dearie?" he teased, his grin widening from one ear to the other as he watched her writhe, her eyes a restless ocean bordering on storm, as they frantically searched the counters. "I guess the Easter Bunny must have been here," he called after her, when she vanished in the pantry.

"Elias, are you sure?" Subaia called excitedly, suddenly appearing in the doorway, "Mommy, did you see him?" The child was bobbing up and down, clapping her hands in glee.

Belle was mortified, as she peeked out from the small storage room, not having been successful in finding the cartons. Her expression softened somewhat when she took in the pure joy emanating from her baby-girl's face. She had no idea how she was going to fix this...

Annie was still in her bunny pajamas when she bounded in, seconds later, accompanied by her father, who was rubbing his bristly chin awkwardly. The child was already holding a shoe in each hand, and her face was crinkly from lying down on some stuffy toy or other. She was all daddy's girl. "Mommy! Do I need my jacket?" she inquired urgently.

The grown-ups shared a cringe, but before Belle could say anything, Elias began giggling manically, almost spilling his juice, and rose from his chair. "Nope," he said, producing the small wicker baskets Belle had set out on the window sill on Good Friday after they'd dyed the eggs at the kitchen table. "It's warm outside, darling! Let's go!"

"Elias?" Belle snapped, casting him a quizzical look.

"You're doing it again, mom!" the boy reminded her sternly, winking in pushing past her, "Relax, you're giving yourself wrinkles."

The girls almost ran their father over, grabbed their little baskets and hurried off, squealing in delight, Elias in their wake. Instead of following them outside, Robert calmly fetched two mugs from the dishwasher and got started on their coffee, his lips curving upwards in a slow smile. "Just sit down and enjoy the show," he told his wife, "It's what I always do."

Belle ignored him and opened the door to their patio, letting in the warm air of spring. She stepped outside and observed her oldest, standing with his back to her, arms akimbo and laughing at the top of his lungs, as Subaia began scaling the old plum tree that was in full blossom.

"Mommy! The Easter Bunny was really silly this year," she yelled down retrieving a green egg with purple stripes from one of its forking branches, "Look where he lost this one!"

"Or this one!" Annie laughed, emerging on the flat rooftop of the hen house, where a red egg lay in the eavestrough.

Elias half turned towards her, a wicked gleam in his eyes. "Now, let's get down to business, dearie," he suggested. "I believe this calls for renegotiations on the terms of our agreement on my computer-time, doesn't it?"


End file.
